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PRESIDENT WANTS F.D.A. TO REGULATE FOREIGN PRODUCE

Acting after several outbreaks of disease linked to the burgeoning global trade in produce, President Clinton announced today that he would ask Congress to require Federal regulators to ban imports of fruit and vegetables from countries that did not meet expanded American food safety standards.

The move, urged by regulators since shortly after Mr. Clinton first took office and welcomed today by industry and consumer groups, would empower the Food and Drug Administration to insure the safety of foreign fruit and vegetables in much the same way that other Federal regulators check meat and poultry from overseas.

Mr. Clinton said he would ask for more money from Congress next year for the F.D.A. to hire investigators to inspect not just produce but also foreign farming methods and government safety systems. In a change that might irk some United States trading partners, countries that blocked the new inspections would be forbidden to sell fruit and vegetables in the United States, the Administration said.

''At the time when Americans are eating more and more food from around the globe, we must spare no effort to insure the safety of our food supply from whatever source,'' Mr. Clinton said at a Rose Garden ceremony to announce his proposals today. ''Our food safety system is the strongest in the world, and that's how it's going to stay.''

Imports of produce have increased sharply in recent years, to 38 percent of the fruit consumed by Americans and 12 percent of the vegetables. With those imports, however, have come recent outbreaks of diseases brought across borders by Guatemalan raspberries, Mexican cantaloupes and Thai coconut milk, causing public alarm that might make Congress sympathetic to Mr. Clinton's proposals. But American trading partners may eventually choose to protest any ban on their products to the World Trade Organization, much as the United States on Wednesday said it would file a complaint with that organization protesting Japan's stringent test for pesticides on American nectarines, cherries and other fruit. The United States sells twice as much food abroad as it imports.

Donna E. Shalala, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, said that Mr. Clinton would ask for $24 million annually to support the Food and Drug Administration's new international inspections. Another official said that if Congress acted on Mr. Clinton's proposal, the F.D.A. would phase in its system for such inspections over the next several years.

Today, Mr. Clinton also directed Dr. Shalala and Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman to develop new voluntary standards within a year for growing, processing, shipping and selling fruit and vegetables. The President said he also expected a report from them within 90 days on how to improve the monitoring of fruit and vegetables grown abroad.

Though they backed the President's proposal, consumer and industry groups said they were anxious about the details in the legislation, which the Administration plans to offer next year.

''What the President proposed today addresses many of the gaps,'' said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. But, she added, ''I would like to have mandatory standards rather than voluntary guidelines'' for food manufacturers and handlers. For their part, White House aides predicted that meeting the voluntary guidelines would become an eye-catching industry selling point.

A senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said it was hard to predict whether the President's initiative could raise produce prices. But producers or sellers may have to pass on the costs of any modifications to consumers, he said.

The main initiative announced today, requiring the F.D.A. to bar foods imported from countries with substandard safety systems, was recommended more than four years ago by David A. Kessler, then the Commissioner of Food and Drugs. Dr. Kessler warned then that the nation's food-safety laws, essentially unchanged since 1938, were in ''urgent need'' of an overhaul.

Contaminated food, he noted, kills an estimated 9,000 Americans a year and sickens millions, perhaps tens of millions. It still does. The food-safety system was marked by ''enormous inefficiencies,'' he warned. It still is, according to a Federal report published in May.

The White House has already moved to institute one of Dr. Kessler's central proposals, a scientific system for controlling the risk of disease borne by seafood, meat and poultry. But no such system yet exists for fruit and vegetables, domestic or imported.

The White House said today that Mr. Clinton has been adopting Dr. Kessler's proposals piecemeal, addressing the most urgent needs first. Michael D. McCurry, the White House press secretary, said that Mr. Clinton was prompted to tighten monitoring of fruit and vegetables partly by several outbreaks of illness and reporting on the potential hazards by news organizations, including The New York Times.

Mr. Clinton's move on food safety comes as he is seeking enhanced authority from Congress to negotiate trade deals. His opponents have charged that the new rules, under which trade deals once negotiated would have to be voted on quickly and without amendment by Congress, would lower barriers to food-borne diseases.

Some opponents of granting the President such fast-track authority hailed Mr. Clinton's announcement today. ''I'm glad the fast-track debate has energized the President to do this,'' said Representative Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio. Mr. Brown and 85 other members recently sent President Clinton a letter linking food safety and trade pacts.

The White House said Mr. Clinton did not connect food safety to promoting his trade goals. The senior Administration official said that he expected some members of Congress to use the initiative as political cover for voting to give the President greater trade authority.

Senator Richard Lugar, the Indiana Republican who heads the Agriculture Committee, will hold hearings on the initiative next week.

The Administration consulted with some foreign governments before today's announcement, one Administration official said, but still expected criticism from abroad. ''There will be some negative reaction in some places, but it won't be the end of the world,'' he said.

Some foreign representatives here worried that Mr. Clinton's proposals might be used to create trade barriers.

The safety of imported food is ''a serious issue coming very fast toward all of us in this new global world,'' said Ambassador John Biehl of Chile. He called the President's initiative ''a good thing as long as it is equal for everyone'' and not ''used as an artificial barrier to free trade.''

Administration officials repeatedly said today that there was no evidence that imported fruit and vegetables were less safe than American ones. But there is little scientific data about the relative safety of domestic versus imported food, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta. One percent or fewer of the actual number of food-borne illnesses are reported, analyzed, identified and successfully traced.

While the Department of Agriculture monitors meat and poultry, produced here or abroad, the F.D.A. is charged with safeguarding all other food, including fruit, vegetables, grains and seafood. But, unlike the Agriculture Department, the Food and Drug Administration can now send its investigators abroad only if they are invited, and agency inspections of the imports have dropped to less than half what they were five years ago.

If Congress approves the President's proposal, the F.D.A. is expected to hire 100 more investigators, who will examine foreign farming methods -- like irrigation and fertilization techniques -- and food safety systems.